


Stop Jumping Off Things, Clint

by LMX



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Clint Barton is William Brandt, Clint Barton stop jumping off things, Injury, M/M, Retirement, Spoilers, done to death, lack of self preservation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-20
Updated: 2012-11-20
Packaged: 2017-11-19 04:00:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/568840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMX/pseuds/LMX
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After jumping from one too many high places, Clint Barton rashly verbalises his plans for retirement. Phil has something lined up for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stop Jumping Off Things, Clint

Phil sat back in the hospital chair, trying to be patient and failing. There was a pile of paperwork laid out on the slide-in table, and he was slowly working his way through it, hoping he'd have time to finish it all before another crisis came in, or Clint finally woke up.

Primarily he was using it to avoid thinking about watching his Agent free-fall 120 feet before Tony had managed to catch him.

About the second-in-as-many-years break in Clint's pelvis, the 'potentially very serious' soft tissue damage to his left shoulder (you're going to have to lock his bow up once he's mobile again, they'd said, if he wants to be able to pick up a pen in five years time, let alone a firearm), and the all too familiar concussion. There were other broken bones too, less tricky ones that they could ignore for the most part, at least until the other more serious issues were dealt with.

This was going to be six months of down-time at least, the longest yet. There had to be a better way to train an agent not to take headers off roofs. There were dangerous habits and then there was Clint Barton, and Phil was still waiting for the day when Hawkeye was going to be too broken to go out into the field.

He wasn't sure whether or not Clint would survive retirement. He was leaning towards 'not'.

Perhaps he could implement a procedure where all of Clint's briefings come with 'No jumping off buildings, Agent Barton' in the primary salient points. He knew that was the only bit Clint read before suiting up anyway.

Not that he would have to worry about it for a couple of months at least. He had time before he'd be here again, waiting on confirmation for the nth time that Clint hadn't completely scrambled his brains against plate glass windows or his team mate's armour.

He'd only just forced his attentions back onto the paperwork (he hadn't stopped working, but his focus had wandered) when Clint made a series of purposeful movements and then opened his eyes groggily.

"Hey you," Phil smiled, reaching for the bedside table where Clint's hearing aids were sat and handing them over before pressing the call button.

Clint looked at the tiny objects in his hand blankly, then back up at Phil with a confused frown.

"Can you do it yourself?" he asked, knowing he was talking to himself as much as anyone, because Clint's eyes were far too unfocused to be concentrating on his lips, and he wasn't going to shout in a hospital room.

Clint smiled slowly. "Hey Phil," he greeted, slurring slightly. He frowned a little, and then looked again at his hand as if realising suddenly what he'd been handed. He was working on putting them in when the doctors arrived to make their assessment.

With his speech and focus improving with each question, Phil left Clint to it. He'd done his bit now, and he had paperwork to finish. The doctors would let him know when he could take his sniper home.

-

It was less pins and needles, more shotgun pellets and crossbow bolts. The metal work inside and outside his body, holding him together, was all aching. Clint could feel the pain showing on his face, but there were limits to hiding that kind of thing, and it wasn't like Phil hadn't seen it before.

"Fuck," he breathed, trying to resettle in the wheelchair as Phil closed and locked the apartment door behind them. He would have rather been on crutches, but his shoulder wasn't up for the strain. "No more rooftops, okay? I'm gonna stick to the ground. I'll be ground-to-air support. Tony can do the aerial surveillance shtick."

It would sound more convincing, he was sure, if Phil hadn't found him on the roof of Clint's building every night he'd felt fit enough to move under his own power, plus a couple he hadn't and had convinced friends and neighbours to take him up there.

"It's only been two weeks since you got out of the hospital," Phil pointed out, pushing blankets on the bed aside to make room. "Don't write yourself off yet."

"Two weeks out of six months of downtime, Phil." His voice turned strained as he grabbed Phil's shoulder and used it to lever himself onto his feet and make the short turn-and-drop onto the bed. He sat and got his breath back, seeking a comfortable position and not finding one. He gave up and slumped down on his back. "I need something to do. I'll clean guns in the armory or do troop support from the helicarrier. I'll even run computer sims or data analysis all day - ANYTHING, Phil."

"Fury has banned you from the helicarrier until you're more mobile," Phil pointed out, handing over pills from the bedside drawer and a new bottle of water from the cabinet underneath, waiting for Clint to take them before putting the bottle back on the table.

"Ableist," he hissed in reply, taking the opportunity to shuffle back on the bed.

"You'd seriously consider computer tech work rather than take your allotted medical leave?" Phil asked, thinking of the file that had passed across his desk the day before. Clint wasn't exactly an experienced analyst, but they'd specified 'field experienced', and he'd worked some of IMF's crazy shit-storms before...

He waited for Clint's confirmation, his eyes already sliding closed. "I might have something for you," he offered. "For when you can go for a whole day without passing out at lunch time."

"I'm not passing out," Clint objected, his voice suggesting quite the opposite.

"Yeah, yeah." Phil restrained a grin. "I'll be back at five."

-

"Phil." The voice on the other end of the phone was crackly with distance or a poor line, Phil wasn't sure which. He was sure who that voice belonged to, though.

"Clint, thank God." Something heavy and sharp uncurled from his stomach, where it had been sitting for longer than he'd realised. "When the Secretary was found, I thought..."

"Yeah, it's been a fun week," Clint sounded tired, and Phil wondered what it had taken Clint to stay alive in Russia the last week. There was some crackling on the other end of the line and then it sharpened up. "Tell me Natasha's alright."

"She's fine," Phil was happy to sound out firmly. "We lost two agents in the explosion at the Kremlin, two more in intensive care. Natasha is upset but not hurt."

"The Avengers out of town?" Phil frowned, knowing that Clint knew that wasn't something he could say over an unsecured line. "Just wondering why they weren't all over that... meteor..." Clint sniggered a little.

"Is this a secure line?" Phil pressed. "Clint... Where are you?" Phil was suddenly very aware how very little they knew of what had gone on in Russia and the sudden and unexpected missile threat in the last few days. Intelligence was leaking through, but other than knowing that the Secretary was dead and IMF had been working on the nuclear missile situation somewhere in India...

"Yes, boss, secure on this end. I'm in Seattle." There was a teasing tone in his voice, an agent with more intel than his handler. Not that he'd worked under Phil in the last three years.

"Are you on your way home?" Phil pressed, trying to make his tone reflect how unamused he was, instead of how happy he was to hear from his once Agent.

"Well... you see..." Oh, that was not a good tone.

"What?" Phil demanded.

"I may have been offered a job with IMF." Phil made a strangled noise what he knew would carry to the other end of the phone line. "And I'm thinking about taking it."

"IMF?" Phil waited for Clint's affirmative. "You've been offered a job - from your sheer glee, I'm guessing a field job - by the only agency more dangerous than SHIELD?" Phil cut short another strangled laugh. "Of course. Do they know you're ex-SHIELD? Do they know you've done contract work for them before?"

There was a moment of static-y quiet on the other end of the line and Phil thought he might have lost him. "I... It's him, Phil. I'm going to be working for Hunt."

Phil was laughing now. "Of course," he repeated. "If you were going to work for the most dangerous agency in the country, of course you'd be working with their equivalent of the Avengers." This sounded vaguely like it should be bad news, but he hadn't heard Clint sound so *light* in years. Not since he took himself out of the field.

"Phil, I may have broken a promise." There was too much smile in his voice for this to be anything serious, but Phil forced down a sigh.

"I figured you wouldn't be able to stay away from your bow..."

"Ah, no..." There was another hesitation. "The jumping-off-things promise. But the world was about to end!" The justification was said all-at-once, and Clint cleared his throat carefully as if embarrased at his own lack of composure. "Again."

"God-damn it, Clint." Phil held back a sigh. Now was not the time, and by the sounds of it he'd escaped unharmed. As long as he didn't get back into the habit...

"There might have also been a falling car, and a river," Clint added, as if an aside. "But that one didn't involve any jumping on my part!"

Phil couldn't believe he was giving that as if it excused the event. "I'll see you when you get home, Clint," he said pointedly down the telephone, and hung up on further excuses.

So much for Hawkeye's retirement.


End file.
